What is the difference between programming, scripting, and markup languages?

Different types of languages are used in coding. And they all serve a specific purpose. Let’s find out the difference between them and when to use which one.

Sometimes you will need to use several programming languages at once: for example, when you are developing a highly complex mobile application or a large website with a lot of interactive elements. At the same time, each type of tool will play its role in the proper functioning of the final product.

Programming languages

This concept refers to a set of rules that tell the computer what and how it should do. A programming language gives the machine instructions that it understands how to perform a particular task. It builds a clear algorithm that the PC must follow to get the desired result.

Usually the developers who write these instructions know their programming language very well. After all, in order to work effectively, one must not only understand syntactic constructions, but also competently use data structures, algorithms, etc.

Programming languages include Python, C#, Java, Go and others.

Markup languages

As the name implies, these languages are all about visual elements. They are used to formalize the representation of data, set the parameters of their appearance. The two most powerful representatives of this type are standardized HTML and extensible XML.

Markup languages consist of tags, which are used to describe the various elements of a document. These elements are readable because they contain plain text.

There are several varieties of markup languages. They differ in that they are designed for different purposes. For example, HTML mainly structures a website, while XML stores and transports structured data.

Scripting languages

This type of tool is needed to integrate with the other languages. The most popular scripting languages at the moment are Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, PHP etc. For example, PHP is usually used in tandem with HTML.

Note that while all scripting languages are core languages, not all languages can be classified as scripting languages.

The difference between them is the presence of compilation. Because scripting languages interpret directly from source code, they are much faster than compiling languages.

That’s it – we briefly covered the main differences that you should focus on when choosing tools for your projects. We hope you now know when to use which one.